Aside from the vanilla ship models themselves, there's little information as to what one should consider when designing a ship. Obviously, one must consider the following: Who is the ship going to be produced for? Which House/Faction? What class? Weapons? Bots/Bats? Shields? Etc.
But what defines the "look" of a Freelancer ship? What guidelines should a person follow? Well, here's a place to start. Here is a list of the vanilla Freelancer ship manufacturers and some general thoughts on their design philosophies:
Liberty - sleek, aggressive USN designs evolved for spaceflight; cues taken from raptors(feathers, beaks, talons), colours include varieties of "steel" from blue to grey
Bretonia - posh, majestic, imagine Rolls-Royce or Vauxhall from the 1950s as a ship builder; colours include red, white, and blue
Rheinland - gothic, industrial, massive and impressive, militaristic, flying cathedrals, simple shapes, modular design; colours include drab green and grey
Kusari - flying Shinto shrines, Chinese pagodas, and samurai helmets; stylized, sleek, angular, with reptilitan(dragon) features; think "bushido" and junks in space; colours include gold, red, copper, and blue
Border Worlds - utilitarian; stylish, if somewhat plain; rugged; colours include greys
Civilian - avian(obviously, given the names), colours include grey and bronze
Rogues - exactly what a sci-fi pirate ship should look like, made to fly the flag of the Jolly Roger; colours include grey, bronze, red, and yellow
Corsairs - if Rome was in Freelancer, that is what its ships would look like, colours include brown and red
Order - modified Liberty designs; colours are same as Liberty
Bounty Hunters - predatory, specifically predatory aquatic life; colours include grey and blue
Nomads - organic forms laid over an underlying skeleton, radial symmetry; colours include blue(Nomad-specific texture)
Zoners - stylized organic forms; "unfinished" in that not all exterior surfaces have hull panels; large; "alien" compared to other House designs; colours include tan, grey, and ivory
If I missed any(remember, vanilla-only), please add.
What I'm hoping to acheive here is a definition in broad strokes of the various designs. What I want to stay away from is specifics like: "Liberty should have such and such wing styles" or "Rheinland should have a big round thing in back of the ship" or "Bounty Hunters should have vertical wings." My reason for this is simple. Let's face it, the vanilla designs are old and they need to evolve. Sticking to specifics just results in a jumbling around of the parts in a new configuration. Like taking the Patriot cockpit assembly, sticking it on the back end of the Defender and bending the wings up. I'm not trying to offend those modellers who are trying to build on the original models, by the way. Definately some damn good work there.
But I do think that there is a lot of room to explore, as it were, when designing a Discovery ship. Hopefully, these guidelines will help.
Also, I'd like to establish similar guidelines for the factions who have now acquired ship building facilities. Blood Dragons, Red Hessians, Lane Hackers, IMG, Zoners, etc. If anyone has any ideas, they would be welcomed.
Further to this, I am wondering what the general opinion is on expanding the guidelines for the vanilla manufactures. As it stands, there is only one manufacturer(or style, if you will) of the Civilian ships. Should all future Civilian designs utilize the same avian influences? Or could we not create another manufacturer(or manufacturers) of civilian ships with its own design philosophy? Same for the Border Worlds ships and other factions. Ideas welcome.
Cheers,
Idaho
"There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense."
- Han Solo
hm, I'd add to house designs;
Liberty: american design (you've even got eagle heads on cap ships), but think submarine/warship for the capships, while fighters, I can't really say.
Bretonia: crustacean, it has some of the most smoothed surface ships. Think also of middle age vessel, especially for the Bretonia Battleship, look how the back have a ressemblance to spanish caravelles vessels.
Kusari: Think, fishing ship to old war vessel, with wings that looks like it can fold. Think about dragon features - the horns seems to be present on many of their designs.
Rheinland: Well, industrial industrial thing. Very sharp angle, looks very heavy. Everything should look large and heavy, without any real inspiration I'd say (I mean, they looks like nothing really, except the fighters).
The Bounty Hunter ships are all named after sea predators. The "Sea Serpent, Manta, Orca, Piranha..."
Even though BH caps weren't present in the vanilla, I would go look at the Orca for inspiration.
If your looking for a broad-stroke type statement, I would say "slightly civilian, with a utilitarian and unique design. Built to hunt down and survive treachery, deceit, and cleverness on the part of the criminal."
Thats all I can think of.
"The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground.
Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there."
zoner ships: no original vanilla designs there - but those added had a disinct non-freelancerish look. so they were considered of alien origin, which matches the habit of zoners to dug out stuff far away from whats supposed to be civilized.
their ships are usually bigger than other ships of the same class, roomier anyway. the aspect of their warships being a home aswell as a defense platform is balanced there. their general design is that of something abstractly organic. ( not like nomads that are organic, but something that was build after something organic ) they like the round shapes on their outer armor, but right beneath the ships are similar to rheinland ships. unlike liberty / bretonian ships, they do not have armourplates that cover the whole ship, but only vital parts.
characteristics: shaped like organic forms, never fully armoured all around the ships body, bigger than average
about kusari fighters: they are supposed to be still-lifes of a sea serpent leaping out of the water. - their mainbody is the snakes body with the cockpit being the head. ( they do have some sort of a "face" ) - the sunfoils are the gushing water. the fighters allmost have no body at all. - they appear massive enough, but when you look upon them closely, they are only a very smallish cockpit console, a large backfin, 2 solar panels that can be folded up and a seperate and rather small engine. all parts are on their own.
characteristics: modular, light, great emphasis on form over function
rheinland warships: they take the thought of "you don t need streamlined shapes in space" literally. gunboat and cruiser look like other ships internal structure - but heavily armoured. they remind me a little on RL combat helicopters. - very very thin from the front and quite large from the sides. furthermore, they look modular - the tubes on the cruiser, the seperate parts on the gunboat etc. - easy to replace, compared tot he more complicated shapes of liberty / bretonia.
characteristics: modular, heavy, funciton over form
' Wrote:Liberty: american design (you've even got eagle heads on cap ships), but think submarine/warship for the capships, while fighters, I can't really say.
Liberty fighters even have texture with feathers on the wings and u dont know on what they remind you? :P
Eagle may hold the name, but Liberty fighters hold the looks of it....
Whilst im sure ill be proved completly wrong, Vanilla ships dont have perticularly majestic paint jobs, the metal appears to be very aged and has taken some abuse from space battles. I've visited a few mods which have ships that look theyre being flown by Da Vinci himself.